Text 9043, 239 rader
Skriven 2005-02-13 03:18:14 av John Hull (1:379/1.99)
Ärende: Liberal Legacy, Part 1
==============================
The following is pretty much self explanatory.  This is the way it really
happened, not the way the history books of your average high school sophomore
tell it.  If you can't handle truth, don't bother to read.



There are at least eight or nine major areas I could talk about, but it would
take too long to do them all proper justice, so I will only cover a few of them
now.

1.  Government and the "Principles of 98"

We started down the slippery slope as early as the end of the 18th century,
with the fight between Hamilton and Jefferson over a national bank.  Jefferson,
allied with Madison, opposed such a bank on the grounds that the Constitution
did not grant the government the authority to create it.  Proponents of such a
bank, and later of building roads and canals at government expense, used the
clause in the Constitution that says the government ought "to provide for
common defense and the general welfare" to justify anything they wanted to do. 
This completely ignored the fact that the Founders specifically enumerated the
powers of the federal government right in the Constitution itself in Article 1,
Section 8.

Madison had this to say about it:  If Congress can employ money indefinately to
the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general
welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may
appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their
public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children
establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the
provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other
than post-roads; in short, everything, from the highest object of state
legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the
Power of Congress.

Madison wrote that in 1792. Sounds an awful lot like the way things are today,
doesn't it?  So much so, that one no longer even hears objections raised as to
the constitutionality of legislation proposed by the government.    

Jefferson also feared consolidation of power in the hands of the goverment.  He
was a strong supporter of the concept of state's rights.  He wrote, in 1825: 
"It is but too evident, that the three ruling branches of [the national
government] are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State
authorities, of all powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all
functions foreign and domestic."

The culmination of this struggle was in 1798.  At that time, we were in a
quasi-war with France and under a lot of tension in the new government. 
Hamilton, and the Federalist Party, managed to enact the infamous "Alien and
Sedition Act."  They were opposed by Jefferson and his Republicans, on the
basis of the supremacy of state's rights and the strict construction of the
Constitution.  This act allowed the deportation of resident aliens deemed
"treasonous" by the government.  The nebulous nature of that term was bad
enough, but it was the idea of seditious libel that had the Republicans up in
arms.  Despite the abuses of partisan enforcement and loose definition of what
constituted sedition, most objections were concerned with the constitutionality
of the act.  It came down to an argument over state's rights.  The Constitution
did not authorize the government to pass laws on the freedom of speech and the
press, nor had the states given such authority to the federal government.  The
Alien and Sedition Act was a clear violation of the Constitution and of state's
right.

The other shoe in this fight involved the so-called Kentucky Resolutions. 
Many, such as Daniel Webster, used the wording of the Constitution against
itself, by claiming that "We the People" was used and not "We the States" when
it was written.  The original wording of the Constitution, however, did indeed
say "We the States."  Since the Founders didn't know which states would ratify
the Constitution, they substituted the phrase "We the People of the United
States" to avoid having to list each and every state in such situations.  This
change was unanimously accepted by the member of the convention.  Had it not
been, as with other issues, there would have been lengthy debate on the
wording, Webster's later claims notwithstanding.

Jefferson and the Republicans believed that the only way a state could retain
its liberties and remain in the Union if such unconstitutional laws were
enacted was through the concept of nullification, whereby a state could declare
such unconstitutional acts of the federal government null and void within its
borders.  Many thought that such an idea was wrong because it the Constitution
didn't include any provision for such nullification.  However, as John C.
Calhoun pointed out, the compact of the Constitution also didn't give the
federal government the right to prevent nullification, since it was the states
approval in the first place that granted the compact.  Thus, the federal
government owed its very existence to the states themselves.

Thomas Jefferson anonymously wrote the documents which became known as the
Kentucky Resolutions, in which he spelled the objections to the Alien and
Sedition Acts, and the use of nullification as a response to such acts.  James
Madison wrote similar resolutions that were later adopted by the Virginia
legislature.  The following year Kentucky passed the following resolution: 
"Resolved... That, if those who administer the General Government be permitted
to transgress the limits fixed by that compact, by a total disregard to the
special delegations of power therein contained.... That the several States who
formed that instrument being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable
right to judge of the infraction; and that a Nullification by those
sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under color of the instrument is
the rightful remedy."

The fight over state's rights continued unabated until it culminated in the War
Between the States.  The Federalists effectively won the issue when the North
defeated the South.  The abuses of federalism that Jefferson and others warned
us about over two hundred years ago continue to this day.  What is even worse,
ask any high school kid about any of this and what you are likely to get in
response is a blank stare of incomprehension.  This period is the basis for the
so-called "cradle to grave" strong central government so typical of the
liberalism of the last half century.  The dirty little secret that they don't
want us to know, however, is that nothing has changed, and the things that
caused the problems then are just as valid today, as is the remedy.


2.  The Great Depression and the New Deal

Most people think the Great Depression started with the stock market crash in
1929.  In fact, it did not.  After a decade of prosperity and growth following
World War I, Black Thursday sent a message that we needed to pay closer
attention in some areas.  It resulted in a fairly severe recession, but nothing
that we couldn't have dealt with except for one thing:  the election of
Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.  His election ushered in was is probably one of the
worst periods of economic disaster in modern history, if not in the history of
the world.

Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt's predecessor, gets credit for greasing the skids
prior to the push Roosevelt's policies gave the economy.  In 1931, at the
height of the recession, Hoover coerced business leaders into keeping wages at
an artificially high level, as if there were no recession and no unemployment
at all.  His idea was that if people had plenty of money they would spend it
and that would help end the recession.  The problem though, was that sales of
durable goods had dropped off tremendously.  Employers were forced to lay off
huge numbers of workers in order to adhere to Hoover's wage guidelines,
resulting in even less economic activity.  

Hoover made a couple of other stupendously stupid decisions as well.  Enter the
Federal Farm Board.  During World War I when European farm production nearly
stopped, American farming increased in huge amounts, resulting in a glut of
farmers after the war ended.  Naturally, by 1930, there were far too many farms
for the economy to support and farmers were broke.  Instead of letting market
forces work through natural attrition, Hoover formed the Federal Farm Board to
help farmers by making loans to farmers so they could keep their crops off the
market until prices rose.  However, instead of cutting back on crop production,
farmers increased it the next year, further undermining the economy.  Wheat and
cotton were particularly hard hit.  Their idea was to create a world shortage
of wheat and other crops, which would then cause prices to rise and enable them
to sell their huge excess at a profit. What happened instead was that Argentina
and Canada were able to increase their production to fill the shortfall,
leaving US crops to rot in the silos.

Then, as if ruining the farm economy wasn't enough, Hoover slapped taxes on
just about everything that wasn't nailed down.  The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was
intended to provide protection to agriculture, but ended up putting tariffs on
everything.  European countries responded by putting tariffs on their goods as
well, effectively shutting American goods out of the international marketplace.
 Predictably, that deepened the economic woes of American business and
agriculture exponentially.

By the time the 1932 elections took place, things were so bad that anyone
promising to fix things was assured of winning the White House.  By the time
FDR took office, the world was toppling over the brink into a full blown
depression.  Between 1932 and 1940 under FDR, unemployment would reaching a
staggering 25%, with an average of 18% for his first two terms.  One biographer
noted that there was noone more ignorant of economics than FDR, and his
policies proved it.  He knew nothing of wealth creation, and his legislation
was a patchwork of absurdities.  Many of his programs contradicted each other,
and in some cases even themselves.

FDR is responsible for such boondoggles as the NIRA, the National Recovery
Administration, which kept wages high for "purchasing power" but hamstrung that
by establishing hundreds of industry cartels that regulated work hours,
standard wages, and even minimum prices for goods - which had the effect of
eliminating competition and innovation.  He is responsible for the AAA, the
American Agriculture Administration, which established basic dietary needs at 4
levels - liberal, moderate, minimum, and emergency (below subsistence). 
Studies found that America was not producing enough food to meet minimum
requirements, yet its policies kept food prices so high that people were
literally starving while agricultural products rotted in government warehouses
and silos.

This legacy of government interference in agriculture is still with us today. 
One of the hallmarks of these programs is the destruction of millions of pounds
of produce every year, while food prices continue to go up, and millions of
people worldwide literally starve to death.  In the 1980's for example, the US
government annually destroyed 50 million lemons, 100 million pounds of raisins,
and a BILLION oranges!  Government policy has all but assured the virtual
demise of the traditional family farm between its price supports, and loans for
expensive equipment to produce more food that there is no market for, and which
can't be repaid because the produce that does sell doesn't provide enough
profit.  Sugar costs about 500% more than it should because of price supports. 
The list of such idiocy is unending.

FDR also interfered with labor laws, resulting in higher labor costs associated
with Social Security, adding to the unemployment problem to the tune of 1.2
million more unemployed in 1938 alone.  Government meddling created such an
atmosphere of uncertainty, that anyone who could invested in long term tax free
bonds rather than reinvesting in business, which caused sources of capital to
dry up, stopping any chance of a business recovery.  The Wagner Act in 1935
greatly increased the power of labor unions, which resulted over time in
further unemployment and business failures.  Economists Richard Vedder and
Lowell Gallaway of Ohio University calculated in a 2002 study that labor unions
have cost the American economy over 50 TRILLION DOLLARS over the last 50 years.
 They stated that "(t)he deadweight economic losses are not one shot impacts on
the economy.  What our simulations reveal is the powerful effect of the
compounding over more than a half a century of what appears at first to be
small annual effects."  The study found that while union labor averaged 15%
higher wages than non-union labor, it also found that wages in general suffered
dramatically as a result of an economy that is 30 to 40 percent lower than it
would have been in the absence of labor unions. 

The third major leg of FDR's economic program was public works projects carried
out under the auspices of the WPA and other similar agencies.  The majority of
these projects were nothing but make work projects, designed to give the
millions of unemployed something to do (keep them out of trouble?).  All that
was really accomplished was that it undermined efforts by business to break out
of the depression by getting people back to work at legitimate jobs.  It was,
in effect, a massive soup kitchen effort by the federal government.  Another
little known aspect of the WPA programs is that they were used as political
plums to assure votes for FDR.  Workers were pressured to contribute part of
their wages to election campaigns that directly benefitted FDR, the Democrats,
and their political allies.  The political corruption in the WPA and other
agencies was appalling.

Discussing FDR would not be complete without mentioning his attempts to pack
the Supreme Court with justices sypathetic to his ideas.  Congress finally
rebelled and prevented him from doing so, but it was all for nothing, because
he ended up replacing seven of them by natural attrition.

In additon to all the above, FDR created the federal welfare system, which
would relegate three generations to poverty and set America's races on a
collision path that would destroy all the progress made since the Civil War;
and Social Security.



End: Part 1




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